Billionaires and the Trump Admin: Bill Ackman

Bill Ackman

Net Worth: ~$9 billion (Forbes)

• A longtime Democratic-aligned donor, Bill Ackman publicly backed Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the 2024 election cycle. Ackman donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican-aligned PACs in the general election after backing Dean Phillips in the Democratic primary, both Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s run as an independent. 
  • In a characteristically long-winded tweet from October 2024, Ackman gave 33 individual “actions” that Democrats made him decide to support Trump over Kamala Harris. Three of them (actions 13, 26, and 27) were about Ackman’s personal skepticism of vaccines. According to Ackman, he supported Trump in part because Democrats … 
    • … “mandate vaccines that have not been adequately tested nor have their risks been properly considered compared with the potential benefits adjusted for the age and health of the individual, censoring the contrary advice of top scientists around the world”
    • … “do nothing about the proliferation of new vaccines that are not properly analyzed for their risk versus the potential benefit for healthy children who are mandated to receive them”
    • … “do nothing about the continued exemption from liability for the pharma industry that has led to a proliferation of mandatory vaccines for children without considering the potential cumulative effects of the now mandated 72-shot regime”

• Ackman stands to gain a lot from the potential privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises that are crucial to the stability of the housing market. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management owns roughly 10 percent of the common stock of both Fannie and Freddie. Privatization would almost certainly increase mortgage rates, increasing the cost of buying a home for many Americans—a boon to investors like Ackman.
  • In December, Ackman predicted that the Trump administration would privatize Fannie and Freddie, and through his hedge fund, he presented a privatization plan just a few days before Trump’s second inauguration. In his February confirmation hearing, HUD Secretary Scott Turner said that aiding (in his words, “quarterbacking”) such an effort was a priority.
  • (To learn more about who would benefit and who would lose from Fannie and Freddie privatization, read this blog from our Jacob Plaza.) 

• Ackman’s most famous bet as an investor is probably his yearslong short position in the multi-level marketing company Herbalife. While Ackman’s argument about the company appears to basically be correct, he actually lost around $1 billion shorting the stock, as he was unable to shake investor confidence in Herbalife. In a 2014 presentation, Ackman began to cry while alleging that Herbalife was defrauding Americans; following the presentation, the stock price increased more than 25 percent.

• Another famous misstep of Ackman’s was his investment in Valeant Pharmaceuticals, in which Pershing Square acquired a nearly 10 percent stake in 2015. Valeant’s business case centered on two practices: (1) shady accounting—the company was loosely compared to Enron—and (2) acquiring existing drugs and jacking up their prices. Despite this lucrative revenue model, Ackman’s bet failed to pay off, with Pershing Square losing close to $4 billion on the company in just two years.

• In late 2023, took to Twitter to attack Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay. While obviously motivated by his revulsion toward “DEI” programs and his view that she had been insufficiently supportive of Israel during its brutal war on Gaza, Ackman ended up attacking Gay primarily with somewhat lukewarm allegations of plagiarism dug up by right-wing activist Chris Rufo. When Business Insider found similar instances of plagiarism in the work of Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, Ackman threatened to sue the publication.